From: Celia Cuomo (celia@mo.com)
Date: Mon Mar 08 2004 - 07:27:58 PST
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 2004 07:27:58 -0800 Subject: Re: pinhole GEMS Life Through Time, Errors? From: Celia Cuomo <celia@mo.com> Message-ID: <BC71D0FE.1B75%celia@mo.com>
Raleigh and other interested Pinholers,
I received the following response about the GEMS Guide, Life Through Time,
from Lincoln Bergman, GEMS Associate Director, for the Great Explorations in
Math and Science (GEMS) curriculum development team:
We gather that a recent posting quoted a teacher as saying the GEMS
teacher's guide Life Through Time: Evolutionary Activities for Grades 5-8
had "significant errors" and that one district was thinking of not using it.
We'd like to allay that concern.
Elizabeth Offutt, Science Education Professor said in a published review of
the guide: "Educators often struggle to find age-appropriate, scientifically
accurate, and appealing resources to meet middle school benchmarks in the
content area of evolution. To approach this complex and important area of
life science, Lawrence Hall of Science has developed [this] excellent GEMS
resource..."
Dr. Niles Eldredge, Chair, Committee on Evolutionary Processes & Division of
Paleontology (Invertebrates) at The American Museum of Natural History (he
and Stephen Jay Gould framed the theory of punctuated equilibrium), has
said: "Fascinating as fossils are, and dramatic as the history of life may
be, it takes skillful teachers prepared with accurate material to make the
excitement come to life for young students. The GEMS guide Life Through
Time fills the bill beautifully, and should prove to be a boon in the
classroom."
Some post-publication comments have raised a number of issues, large and
small. (Incidentally, none concerns the placement of humans on the
evolutionary tree, as the person who posted humorously supposed. In fact,
any notion of humans' evolutionary superiority is repeatedly and vividly
dispelled throughout the guide and in the background information for the
teacher.) This GEMS guide is quite "mammoth," over 300 pages, and minor
errors are inevitable in such an encyclopaedic work. We willingly
acknowledge these errors, as well as issues that arose when balancing
curriculum design and age-appropriateness decisions within a highly complex
field. To find out more about the guide and this quite interesting
curricular discussion, visit www.lhsgems.org/Evolves.html The article there
(which was sent to 50,000 educators nationwide through the GEMS newsletter)
also links to some corrected pages that teachers can download if they wish.
If you do read the article on our website, don't miss Stephen Jay Gould's
comment about bacteria! If any of you have further questions and concerns
about this GEMS guide, please do not hesitate to contact me:
lbergman@berkeley.edu
Lincoln
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